


You're Alright Where You Are

by The_Birds_And_Bees



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Chara: goatsucker, Gen, I knew it, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Suicidal Ideation, chubacabra, except if someone wrote a shoddy ripoff, kind of sort of epic-divorcemman esque, two kids relapse hard and you think the tags would be darker than they are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 01:32:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9693989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Birds_And_Bees/pseuds/The_Birds_And_Bees
Summary: You hate everything. Frisk (through a veil of constant repression and self-imposed optimism) lowkey hates everything. Monsters, for the most part, do not hate everything; and it’s that running dance of ‘we’re not helping but look at how much we love you’ which reminds you they care.Not that it helps, but. Y’know. They care.





	

**Author's Note:**

> In stunning tradition of never actually writing for myself, I dedicate this to Dan. Sometimes, it’s just nice to have someone acknowledge you’re hurting and not ignore it, so I hope this feels somewhat akin to a gentle pat on the shoulder (or respectful non-invasion of your boundaries).
> 
> Also huge thanks to Lint who sat there and made jokes about Chara smearing shit on the walls. We’re good people.

* * *

 

You wake up.

It’s a statement you have a lot of difficulty with, on your best days. You wake up. You take a deep breath, chest rising as you fill your own lungs, and exhale what is probably (definitely) the type of morning breath that could kill. You brushed your teeth last night- before the 2am skulk down to the fridge, shovelling a few things into your mouth before setting others underneath your arms; non-perishables that found their way beneath your mattress, behind the bookshelf, at the top of your wardrobe. That was your warning sign. That, was your warning sign.

You wake up. The sun presses meaty, orange colored palms on the back of your eyelids, and you fucking hate everything. You wake up.

Coincidentally, dying is supposed to cause something of the opposite issue. Dying is supposed to cause nothing at all. The media lied to you. Death is bogus.

Death isn’t even something that you can _have_ anymore, and golly gee, that thought cements the idea that today is just one of Those Days.

The worst thing is nobody comes. You lay there, for about an hour (five minutes. Your perception of time is completely shot, and you have no intentions of fixing it). Nobody comes. Nobody came. Reread the script, when you’ve got nothing else going for you. Fill a role that hasn’t needed filling in five years, or ever. Nobody fucking comes, and you’re spiteful enough to resent that even when you don’t really want them here anyway.

It’s just that, if someone was here, they’d drag you out of bed. Now you have to do it yourself. Insult onto injury.

You have to be the one to open your eyes. The look on your face is probably somewhere within the range of Just Watched the Bee Movie Again and #skeleton dehumanizes a child further at the tug of sleep scum in your eyelids- that’s going to be there all day. The first thing you see is your pillow, and the second, a stream of light coming through the window. You didn’t close the curtains. It was probably intentional.

Your past self can go fuck themself, but they get an A+ in self imposed torture techniques.

This room is yours. This room has been yours for four years now, and in that uncanny valley kind of way, you suppose there’s something of a personality, installed into it somewhere. A few photos stuck to the mirror, covering most of the surface (Frisk did that) some kind of fake flower arrangement decorating the chest of drawers (Asriel did that). It’s a personality that’s composed of a hodge podge collection of what other people think you should like, impulse buys and purchases entirely reliant on the fact that your eyes had lingered on something for more than a fraction of a second. They want you to know they are- and they do.

They care, for the hodge podge personality imposed onto you. A Chara(HA HA, FUCK YOU SANS)cature of flowers and green and… things. That aren’t quite right. Continued life, color symbolism; you have too much time on your hands, and 2am can only be entertained by staring at the paint on your walls so many times before you wind up on the internet, researching things that will never actually make a difference, but make you feel better. Worse.

This room is yours. The carpet is yours, scratchy and old, the only section of the floor that wasn’t recarpeted because you’d insisted on it, and even if no one understood quite why, the first few years of coming back from the dead really gave you a sense that you could get anything you wanted, at the drop of a hat. Maybe you could’ve taken more advantage of that. Maybe you just wanted something in this house to not be thrown out, because it wasn’t good enough for everyone else’s personal aesthetics. It is a mystery. It’s rough enough that you can feel it when you rub your arms across it, when you’re under the bed and you just don’t have the room, and a rug burn is a rug burn but it’s a hell of a lot better than staring out at the opening and waiting for the first foot to come into view and haha, ha.

Ha.

Getting out of bed is a process of ripping off the bandaid. Wrench back the covers and quite literally throw yourself on the floor, hear the thump (feel the thump) and look at the little lint balls that are gathered across it’s surface- good morning, you fuck. Good morning.

You’re going to vacuum the hell out of this floor. A genocide of lint and nail clippings, the sort of carnage that makes skeletons sweat. It’ll be the one time you invite him into your room; just so you can see the lights in his eyes go out when everything is antiseptic clean. You’ll hate it, and you won’t sleep for weeks; but is the ten seconds maximum discomfort you may attain worth it? Absolutely.

The next step is standing.

“Chara, wake up! You must stay determined!” Sarcastically, you pull back the script again. Reiterate tired lines and pretend that they’re something that should have motivated you to live as you pick yourself off the ground, and god, _god._

You’re so tired.

There is a moment in time in which it all just stops. The run amock thoughts, the ridiculous attempts at sarcastic motivation. You get to your feet, you look at your room. A room that is yours, without a single thing on display that you would call a personal identifier (you don’t even know what your sense of identity should _look_ like) and you’re so tired.

It’s one of those days. There’s only so many subliminal attempts to make yourself into a joke before you are, literally, a joke. What a joke.

Grit your teeth and get dressed.

Asshole.

Breakfast is well and truly over by the time you manage to slouch your way down the stairs, evidence of it’s existence smeared across the dirty dishes in the sink, a waft of eggs in the air. You bypass the fridge entirely and make for the coffee pot; just for something dark and bitter, black as your SOUL.

You hate coffee. All the more reason to ensure it’s the only thing pooling in an already churning gut.

“Hi, my name is Chara Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way, and I have absolutely zero personality (that’s how I got my name),” You tell your cup. “With fits of nihilism and angst that fits my blood red eyes and caustic smile and a lot of people tell me I look like death- AN; if you don’t know who that is get da hell out of here.”

There’s a scuff behind you. Crocs sliding across laminate, which means it’s Frisk, which possibly means sunshine smiles and a sense of peace that only people who defeat death at every turn have. You don’t look at them.

“I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he is a major fucking hottie. I died but I got better, I guess. I have pale white skin. I’m also a demon, and I live with a furry and two actual furries in bumfuck nowhere. I’m a demon- in case you didn’t hear me last time- and I wear whatever’s clean. For example today I was wearing a sweater and some pants. Thrilling. I was drinking coffee. The sun was out,  which I was pretty pissed off about. Frisk stared at me. I put my middle finger up at them.”

They make a warbling sound at you. You actually do flip them off, even if your heart isn’t into it. All part of the Characature that embodies whatever it is that’s supposed to be you. They don’t get it; they’re still closer than most.

They have to text to talk to you, since you’re being a rude fuck who won’t look at their hands. And you’re tempted; oh, so very tempted, to ignore that as well, but that’s the thing.

You could. You fucking could, and you know precisely what that would do to them. So you don’t. You fish out your phone whether you feel like it or not, and you damn well read their message because they don’t really deserve your time. Alternatively, you really don’t deserve their time.

Sins and crawling. You’ve got them in spades.

**Original OC pls do not steal.**

“You get me. My dude, my main guy, we’re taking this bad boy and outselling God of Hyperdeath by spades. Asriel will never live through the shame. The cycle repeats anew.” The last part is muttered into the rim of your mug; like it’s natural, every day speak to casually refer to your brother’s probable second death. When your only answer is silence, you sneak a glance their way; take in the bags under their eyes and the slack set of their mouth and realize that they really aren’t up for your shit, right now.

You hate everything. Frisk (through a veil of constant repression and self-imposed optimism) lowkey hates everything. Today is a lowkey day; you’re honestly impressed to see them off the couch, out of bed. The effort it must have taken to function on some basic level was the mocking type of torture that only 201X kids could understand.

They practically fall into a chair, slumping heavily across the surface of the breakfast bar, and you get them a cup of orange juice before the lack of anything to clutch onto leaves them melting into the floor, out of existence entirely. It’s pretty much the opposite of enough.

Where the fuck is Asriel?

You hate everything. Frisk (through a veil of constant repression and self-imposed optimism) lowkey hates everything. Monsters, for the most part, do not hate everything; and it’s that running dance of ‘we’re not helping but look at how much we love you’ which reminds you they care.

Not that it helps, but. Y’know. They care. It’s more helpful to Frisk than you. Another slip of evidence for the pile of reasons why bringing you back was never going to work out in anyone’s favor. Who’s fault is that?

Unfortunately for the both of you, there's a distinct lack of white fur in your space. Looks like you'll have to do; which seems entirely unfair to everyone involved, and strictly speaking, you think the narrative should talk an abrupt change. Pretend to be a happy story, with an overly happy ending. Something real fucking goopy, that pulls out an 'aww'.

Yeah fucking right.

And that right there is the reason you’re not the right person for this. You can’t even bring yourself to sit down next to them. Across from them. Frisk makes like a puddle with chubby fingers wrapped around a cup of orange sludge, and you slouch against the fridge with your black sludge and pretend that you’re capable of things like coddling and hugs, holding hands and patting someone’s back. This is your version of it.

When Frisk still looks ten seconds short of melting into a -_- shape across the floor, you run your mouth. As you do.

“So there was that place in Waterfall with reeds fucking everywhere and that shitty flower- don’t look at me like that; Waterfall sucks. Shut up and let me finish.” They haven’t said a word. “Waterfall, reeds fucking everywhere and shitty flowers. You know the place. Trying not to get turned around was like trying to actually see anything, you could’ve dumped like, fifty bodies and none of them ever would’ve been found.”

Frisk raises their hands, probably to tell you that you couldn’t have hidden fifty bodies there; because you never had bodies to stash there in the first place. You read sign language better than you sign yourself, but ‘shut up’ is a tried and true phrase that spans in a universal connotation (though you shouldn’t be telling them to shut up. You shouldn’t, but you’re not Asriel, and if people are going to leave you to deal with this then everyone has to live with you adding to already reinforced notions that they aren’t allowed to be heard and good god how much lower can you go).

“Like, don’t get me wrong about this because the Underground is just a shitty overload of walking, but that place was something else. It smelled bad, it was dark, sometimes people whispered creepy shit at you. You could never tell when it was going to _end_.” Add to that some shitty plaques on the walls, a couple of conversations that started with _can you kill a star_ and ended with _are you a star_ and it was like the setting for a Freddy Kreuger rom-com, complete with background music. “You know how Denny’s has that, ‘it’s 2am and I’m sitting here eating pancakes in the void- it’s actually three in the afternoon’, vibe? It’s like that, but more slime. More non-consumable slime.”

“It jst...gets into your socks.” Frisk mumbles, and you’re proud. You’re proud, because you can get them to talk when nobody else can, and nobody can take that away from you. You can’t even take that away from you.

“And you’re just trudging along listening to your shoes eat themselves, _skhhshh, skkkrt-_ ”

“Like a- cryptid-”

“Goatsucker. Chubacabra. I knew it.”

“S’gross…”

“And then the next thing you know Undyne’s got a spear aimed your way and everything’s gone to hell.”

“Escalates quick.”

“Zero to 60 in no time flat.” You bang your fist on the fridge for emphasis. Frisk looks like they appreciate the loud, sudden noise, from the bottom of their squidgy little heart.  “So now it’s dark, it smells bad, people are whispering creepy shit at you, you can’t tell when it’s going to end _and_ you’re being chased by a murderous fish. It’s Hotland or death, take your pick.”

“If’you...can even find it-”

“If you can even find it, yeah. Actually, fuck Hotland too.”

“S’cool. Undyne hated… too barren?”

“Pity her mom wasn’t.”

“ _Wow._ ”

 “You are officially ‘Wow’ed. Revel in the honor.” Frisk gives you one of those stupid, schmoopy grins. You give them one right back. “You know what Waterfall’s like, Frisk?”

 "What?”

“Life. Waterfall’s like life.”

It’s. Haha. It’s dark. It stinks. From time to time, people whisper creepy shit at you, and you can’t tell. You can never tell when it’s going to end. Even when it should, even when you reach the _absolute._

It never- ends. It just doesn’t.

Stay determined, Chara. Continue. Fight a fish.

The fish is crippling depression. It’s constantly trying to kill you.

Yet again, you’ve achieved the full circle. Laughing yourself straight into a corner where you can’t even pretend what you said is funny, leaving you both stranded in a tiled wasteland of shattered hopes and dreams, with a cup of sludge to suit personal tastes. You can see Frisk slowly hunching over themself, and just like that, you’ve ruined it.

It’s a moment to contemplate your personal feelings. Contemplation one: you fucking hate yourself.

Your phone buzzes again.

**Wanna know my favorite part of Waterfall?**

“...Hit me.”

**You were in it.**

“Good _fucking grief._ You know what? You know what?! Canada called, it wants it’s sap back.” You throw your hands up in disgust, and your lukewarm coffee goes with them. The coffee arcs up towards the ceiling; ready to leave stains that no one’s going to bother trying to get off.

And the rest of it comes down. In hindsight, it’s not your greatest moment.

The fact that Frisk’s wheezes of laughter follow you up the stairs is only mildly worthwhile.

You wake up.

It’s a statement you have a lot of difficulty with, on your best days. You wake up. You take a deep breath, chest rising as you fill your own lungs, and exhale what is probably (definitely) the type of morning breath that could kill. You brushed your teeth last night- before the 2am skulk down to the fridge, shovelling a few things into your mouth before setting others underneath your arms; non-perishables that found their way beneath your mattress, behind the bookshelf, at the top of your wardrobe. That was your warning sign. That, was your warning sign.

Time is something that you struggle with entirely. It might take you five minutes to change your clothes. It might take two hours. You run some water through your hair and you pretend that’s good enough, throw some deodorant on as an afterthought that only steals another hour out of your day and when you blink, it’s- still light outside. Hours, minutes. You’re never going to be able to tell the fucking difference.

What you can tell the difference between is when it’s one of those days, and when it’s one of Those Days. Those Days are going to come, and you’re not going to get out of bed. Or you’re going to get out of bed, and you’re going to lock the bathroom door. Someone’s going to bust it open and deal with the aftermath, and you’re going to hate them, and hate yourself, and whatever Characature you’re supposed to be maintaining will fall to shit for a few days, and everyone will forget it even happened by the end of the week.

Other times- those days, this day. Days like these, insert line here, something something hell. These days in lower caps where your mind remembers incessantly, constantly, that you’re alive, that you can’t escape that, and it’s nothing new- days like these, you can take an hour or five minutes to vaguely pretend to collect yourself, and you can go downstairs and maybe drag up another laugh or two.

And you can tell Frisk they’re a sap, even when your first thought, when thinking about the best part of Waterfall, is _me too._

 

Better than listening to smelly creeps alone in the dark, right?

 

Sure.

 


End file.
